Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a cute, but easy-for-a-weekday-morning breakfast for the whole family. Arrange eggs and toast on a plate along with and a composed fruit salad, then add a little extra Irish symbolism in the form of a “spinach shamrock.”

For each plate you are making you will need:

eggs

half an English muffin

a few spinach leaves

strawberries

Clementine wedges

mango

green grapes

blueberries

red or purple grapes

a small heart shape cookie cutter and/or kitchen shears

Here’s how you put it together:

We’re going to start by cutting the pieces to make the shamrock. I’m assuming you don’t have a shamrock cookie cutter sitting in a kitchen drawer, but if you do, feel free to use that to cut a shamrock out of a spinach leaf. If that’s you, go ahead and skip this next part.

For the rest of us, there are two other ways to assemble the spinach shamrock. I used a mini heart cutter to cut three shapes from individual spinach leaves.

Spinach is not as easy to cut with a cookie cutter as some other materials. I found that I needed to press down hard with the palm of my hand and really put some weight behind it. Wiggling it back and forth across the cutting board while I was pressing also helped.

I still had trouble getting all the way through with a few of my spinach leaves though (especially over the center stem), so for those I just snipped the uncut part with kitchen shears, using the indentation from the cookie cutter as a guide.

If you don’t have a heart cutter either, you can cut the shapes by hand. Carefully fold a spinach leaf in half, then cut a half heart shape with the shears. I found that the spinach leaves tended to crack a little using this method, but it wasn’t noticeable on the finished plate.

Next, toast half an English muffing and scramble an egg. Put the egg on the muffin, then assemble the hearts to make a shamrock as shown up above. I used a leftover spinach stem for the shamrock stem.

Finally, put a few rows of fruit on the plate to make a rainbow: strawberry, orange, mango, green grape, blueberries, then red grapes. Even better, if you have a bit of extra time before school have your kid arrange the fruit. I made three rows, but you could do more or less depending on your child’s appetite.

Now, I know some of you are reading this right now and thinking, “Are you kidding me? She just told me to buy six kinds of fruit and then used three bites of each one on the plate! This woman is cray-cray.” I get it! That would be craziness. But I’ve got you covered! While you’ve got all that fruit out, use it to make a super quick fruit salad. Chop up a bunch of the strawberries and the rest of the mango, then peel a few more of those clementines and throw them in a bowl. Add a few big handfuls of the grapes and the blueberries and give it a stir.

Voila! Rainbow fruit salad! Pack some of it into a small container and throw it in your kid’s lunch box and now you are the fun mom or dad who makes a St. Patrick’s day breakfast and lunch. Woo hoo! Go you! Plus you have a healthy pre-dinner snack or something to put next to a frozen waffle or a piece of toast at breakfast tomorrow morning.

Or, you can do it the other way around. Instead of buying each type of fruit individually, grab a container of fruit salad from the grocery store deli and pull pieces of fruit out of that to make your rainbow. It will save you a few minutes in the morning and I promise your kids won’t notice if one of the colors is missing from their rainbows.

I have a new weapon in my never ending quest to find healthy snacks that excite my kids — fruit salsa with cinnamon pita chips. This recipe is crazy simple — it’s basically just a finely chopped fruit salad — but it’s fast to pull together and everyone in my house loves it. I love it so much that I have to leave the room while my boys are eating it or I will push their little hands out of the way so I can have it all for myself. Bwah ha ha ha!

A bonus of this recipe is that you can make it with frozen fruit and it will still taste terrific. This far into winter we are all getting a little tired of apples, bananas and oranges so it’s nice to shake things up with the bags of stone fruits and berries that are stashed in the freezer. If you use frozen fruit for this, be sure to thaw and drain it completely before putting the salsa together. Of course, it would be equally delicious with fresh fruit once that’s in season.

Begin by chopping the fruit into a fairly small dice. You’ll want a bit of each kind of fruit on the chip when you scoop it up and if it’s too large the big pieces will fall off. Don’t bother cutting the blueberries because it takes forever and makes a huge mess.

Place the fruit in a bowl and stir to combine.

If you have a lime hanging out in your fruit bowl and you want to be fancy, zest it and mix that in too. The salsa will still be good without it, but the tangy zing adds a bright note to the mixture and helps offset the sweetness of the fruit and the chips.

Set the bowl out along with some cinnamon-sugar pita chips and watch your kids demolish it.

If you don’t have this exact combination of fruit on hand, you can easily modify this recipe to use what you do have in the house. Pear can be exchanged for apples, swap peaches for the cherries, etc. Or you could go tropical and mix mango, pineapple and kiwi.

]]>http://alphamom.com/family-fun/food-home/fruit-salsa-cinnamon-pita-chips-healthy-kid-snack/feed/1A Special Lunch for the 100th Day of Schoolhttp://alphamom.com/family-fun/food-home/100th-day-of-school-lunch-bento/
http://alphamom.com/family-fun/food-home/100th-day-of-school-lunch-bento/#commentsThu, 15 Jan 2015 17:13:42 +0000http://alphamom.com/?p=35835

The hundredth day of school (also known as the “100 Days of School”) is coming up for kids across the country! In many classrooms, especially those in younger grades, students keep track of every day of school that passes and have a celebration of some sort when they reach the 100th day. Depending on when your school’s first day was (and how many weather cancellations you’ve endured this year) the hundredth day of school will probably fall some time between late January and mid-February. My kindergartner reports exactly how many days have passed at dinner every night — 89 as I’m writing this — and he has already started collecting one hundred objects to bring in to school in a few weeks. Meanwhile, I’ve planned out a special lunch that mixes the number 100 and other school icons for him to take to school when the time comes.

Ingredients you’ll need to make this 100 Days of School Bento Box Lunch:

Place the pretzel thins in one of the sections of the lunch box. Use small letter and number cutters to cut “100 DAYS” from a slice of cheese. If you don’t have small alphabet cutters, you can cut the letters out with a knife.

Place the cheese letters on top of the pretzels.

Use the bus cookie cutter to cut four shapes from a slice of bread. Stamp the bus image into two of them. Cut bus shapes from the remainder of the cheese and use them to assemble mini-sandwiches along with any condiments you’d like to add. Place the sandwiched inside the silicone cup and place it in one of the sections of the lunch box.

Give your child a basket of blackberries and ask them to count the little juice pods on each one (these are called druplets). Only place blackberries with exactly 100 druplets in the lunch box.

Just kidding!That would be ridiculous! Don’t really do that! Just put a handful of berries in, then add your school-themed cupcake pick.

Trim the sugar snap peas to fit in the final section of the lunch box. To make this go really quickly, place the container you are using on top of the peas, then use the edge as a cutting guide. You’ll only need to make two quick cuts to make the peas exactly the right length.

Now we’re going to make a 100 with two cherry tomatoes and a baby carrot! Cut a baby carrot so that it’s the same length as a cherry tomato.

Place the carrot and the tomatoes on top of the snap peas in the lunch box to form the number 100.

Ask your little counter to read you the numbers in his lunch box then send him off to school with visions of 100 dancing in his head.

Bring a little of the outdoors inside with these cute woodsy monogram ornaments. To make them pull wood sticks from your yard or pick them up from the ground in a neighborhood park then pair them with a few items from the craft store.

Supplies to make these ornaments you will need:

3-4 inch wood or chipboard letters

wood glue — I used this because it was what I had on hand; I’m guessing Elmer’s school glue would probably work fine. Be sure to choose glue that dries clear.

Tutorial for making wood ornaments:
Begin by poking holes in your letters so that you can string ribbon through them for hanging. This is a job that is better for grown-ups to do.

Next, break the sticks into short lengths of approximately the same width as the letters. This is a great task for kids! You can just break them by bending them, or if you want to be a little more precise you can cut the sticks part way with a pair of scissors and break them apart the rest of the way. I found it was helpful to break a bunch of sticks all at once so we had a nice pile with different lengths to choose from when we started the gluing.

Add a thick layer of glue to a small section of the letter. Don’t cover the hole you punched!

Add pieces of sticks the same width as the letter to cover the glue. Press the sticks into the glue for a few seconds to make sure they’re really stuck to the letter. If a bit of glue squeezes up into the space between the sticks that’s OK. It will help secure the sticks in place and it will dry clear so it won’t be noticeable.

Continue attaching sticks until the entire letter is covered. A few tips:

Be careful not to cover the hole that you’ll put the string through when you’re adding sticks because it will be very hard — if not impossible — to get the ribbon through once it has dried. Ask me how I know!

I think the letters look good when the sticks overhang the outer edges of the letter a little, but be careful the keep the sticks flush with the inner edges. Even a slight overhang can end up obscuring the holes in the middle of letters (A, B, G, R, etc.).

Placing the sticks on the letters horizontally generally works much better than placing them vertically. Smaller sticks tend to attach to the flat surface of the letter better and it’s also easier to cut them down to the right length.

You’ll find that some sticks don’t nestle together as well as others which can result in gaps that allow the base letter to show through. Tuck small pieces of decorative moss into these spaces to cover them up. Make sure they are connecting to the glue on the base so they’ll stay put!

Allow the letters to sit for a few hours until the glue has dried completely.

Cut a piece of ribbon about 6-7 inches long. Thread it through the hole in the top of the letter and tie it to create a loop for hanging.

Add stickers to decorate the letter.

Hang the ornaments on a Christmas tree, in a window or use them as a super fancy tag on a gift.

Help get your kids excited for Thanksgiving with this cute and healthy sandwich that looks like a turkey. Fill it with PB&J or whatever else your child likes, or with leftovers from the feast.

To get started you’ll need:

red and yellow bell peppers

sandwich bread and sandwich fillings

carrot

red bell pepper or tomato

icing googly eyes

You’ll also need this equipment:

a small leaf-shaped cookie cutter

a large, round cookie or biscuit cutter

Start by cutting the bell pepper into wide strips, then use the leaf cutter to cut eight pieces of orange pepper and four pieces of yellow pepper. If you don’t have a leaf cutter, you can just cut these pieces from the pepper with a knife.

Tip: peel off the tough outer skin of the bell peppers with a vegetable peeler. This will make it easier to cut through the peppers with the cookie cutter and I’ve found most kids are much more likely to eat bell peppers when the skin is removed.

Arrange three pieces of the orange pepper at the top of the plate. Add a row of the yellow bell peppers below that, and then finish the turkey’s tail by adding the remaining orange pepper pieces.

Cut two circles of bread with the large, round cutter and fill the sandwich with whatever fillings you are using. I used ham and cheese when I made this sandwich, but if you have leftovers from Thanksgiving turkey slices and cranberry sauce are kind of a no-brainer for this sandwich. Add the sandwich to the bottom of the plate so that the peppers are tucked under it a bit.

Cut a slice of carrot about an inch wide and two inches long. I cut a baby carrot in half length-wise and it worked perfectly.

Now give the turkey a face. I used icing googly eyes and a couple of small triangles cut from the yellow bell pepper scraps for the beak. The turkey’s wattle was made by cutting two small pieces of red bell out with the end of a drinking straw.

And now you have an adorable sandwich they’ll gobble up! (See what I did there?)

My kids and I love to draw and doodle together. At least once per week I try to shut my laptop, ignore the chores and sit down at the table with them to sketch. Sometimes I give them challenges, other times we all make our drawings of the the same object and sometimes we do our own thing, but we always enjoy talking and creating together.

Earlier this year I started doodling a mandala in my sketchbook and when the kids noticed they started making their own versions. “Mandala” is a Sanskrit word describing a circle or disc. In the Hindu religion a mandala is a detailed geometric figure that represents wholeness or unity. While the mandalas we draw are not particularly spiritual in nature, I’ve found that they are soothing and relaxing to draw. They also end up being a lot of fun to make and they look great taped to the fridge.

Here’s how we do it:

Start by gathering a few materials. The only things you absolutely need are paper and something to draw with — a pencil, pen, colored pencils, marker, whatever. It’s also helpful to have something round to trace and if you or your kids like things extra neat a ruler can come in handy.

I like to dive in and start drawing my mandalas freehand, but I’ve found that I can save a lot of frustration for my boys if I set them up with a basic circle structure they can build on before handing them a piece of paper. I usually trace around a cup or a bowl, but you could use a compass or draw it freehand too.

I also like to divide my circle into quarters because this makes it a little easier to create patterns.

I like to work inward from my initial circle and fill in the circle with geometric designs, then work outward from the edge of the circle drawing shapes and patterns in layers until it covers a great deal of the paper.

Here are some ideas for patterns, shapes and lines you can add to the mandala if you get stuck:

triangles

circles

ovals

arches

scalloped lines

zig-zags

wavy lines

checkerboards

spirals

flowers

diamonds

stars

curlicues

And these are some examples of mandalas my kids and I have drawn:

Sometimes we are precise. Sometimes we’re loosey-goosey. We often like to add color to our mandalas, either by using colored pens or pencils when we are initially sketching or by coloring in the patterns and shapes we’ve made when we are done. One time we made a mandala entirely out of stickers. And sometimes when I draw the circle and hand it over to my kids they go in a completely different direction by drawing monsters or drummers in a flaming circle. That’s OK too.

This post is sponsored by Target. More Turtles, More Bold and Daring Fun: Blur the lines of fantasy and reality with your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Target.

If I were to pick the over-arching theme of my nine-year-old’s summer it would have to be comics. He wakes up early in the morning to read comics in the quiet house before the rest of the family gets up. He pulls something out of his dad’s enormous comic book collection every day. He checks out big, fat comic compendiums when we visit the library and he sketches his own stick figure comic strips in a notebook he keeps under his bed. He loves both reading and drawing and comic books are a perfect mash up of the two.

One of his favorite activities is riding his scooter to the comic book store a few blocks from our house and spending some time browsing. He always comes back from these excursions excited to tell me about the cool things he’s spotted. Sometimes it’s a new installment of a super hero comic book, other times it’s a new issue from Disney or the Simpsons. I do my best to keep up my end of these conversations but I’m not always as well-versed in the comic-of-the-day as he would like.

Recently he came home with news of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. “Mom, did you know there are Ninja Turtle comics? It’s not just a movie.” Yes! I did know that! Finally I could hold my own. “Actually, the Ninja Turtles started as a comic,” I told him. “All the other stuff came later.” He was suitably impressed by this bit of knowledge so I regaled him with all the TMNT trivia I picked up babysitting my younger cousin in the 80’s and scored some cool mom points in the process.

Was I going to let my comic book cred die out after one conversation? Oh no, I wasn’t! I wanted to milk it for all it was worth! The next morning I grabbed a few groceries for a special lunch during a trip to Target and since there was Ninja Turtles stuff everywhere, I may have picked up a few other TMNT treats while I was there too.

When we got home, Wyatt helped me brainstorm ideas for a Ninja Turtles lunch and we made it together. (OK, OK! I’ll admit that I did most of the work. He got bored after brainstorming and started to read his comic.)

How to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Bento Box Lunch

Begin by cutting two large circles from two slices of sandwich bread. You can use a large cookie cutter for this, or you can use a big drinking glass or bowl — anything that’s about the same size as your bread. I used a stainless steel food storage container. Next trim a little bit of bread from the edges of the circles so the bread is a bit pointy at the top and thus more turtle-shaped. I stacked the two slices on top of each other before trimming so the shapes would match up.

Next, cut a mask and a smile shape from the cheese. I like to lay the cheese on top of the bread and score the basic shape I’m going for with the tip of a knife to get an idea of how it should look. You can get fancy and cut an extra bow shape on the end of the mask if you like, or if you want to keep it simple, just cut a strip that’s about an inch wide and trim it to fit on your bread. I used a large drinking straw to cut round eye holes in the mask but you can do those with the tip of your knife too.

Next I made custom TMNT food picks. I found some cool picks with large circles on the end at Target that were just begging to be customized. I used a 1 inch circle punch to cut the Ninja Turtle faces from a thank you card (also found in the party aisle at Target), then I affixed them to each side of a couple picks with double-sided tape. You’ll see how I use the picks down below.

Use a melon baller to scoop pieces out of a honeydew melon and place them in one of the side dish areas of the bento box. I don’t have a melon baller, so I used a set of metal measuring spoons to do my scooping. This is a great job for a kid. Wyatt and I thought the melon balls looked kind of like turtle shells. Do you see it?

Next, cut a slice of cantaloupe about a half inch thick. Use small alphabet cutters to cut “TMNT” from the melon slice. If the melon gets stuck in the cutters, ease it out by gently pressing on the edges of the letters with the blunt end of a toothpick.

Thread the letters onto one of the customized picks then add it to the box on top of the green melon balls.

No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunch box would be complete without some form of pizza, right? I took the easy route and added a handful of pizza flavored Goldfish crackers. I tucked the second customized pick into the section with the crackers. Finally, I stacked a few slices of cucumber in the smallest section of the bento box. Again we thought they looked a little like turtle shells.

Fill a water bottle and tuck it in the lunch bag with the bento box, some TMNT fruit snacks and a TMNT napkin. If you slip a comic book in the bag too, you’ll be all set for a scooter ride to the comic shop.

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This post is sponsored by Target. More Turtles, More Bold and Daring Fun: Blur the lines of fantasy and reality with your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Target.

Do your kids ask you for snacks 200 times per day? Mine do. They ask me for a snack while I’m fixing their breakfast, before they go to bed, and when they are in the bath tub. Sometimes they ask me for a snack while they’re clearing the dishes off the table from the snack they just ate. I don’t want them to be hungry, of course, but I suspect that these requests are prompted by boredom almost as often as they are prompted by hunger pangs so I decided to make make snack time more entertaining by combining a craft and food with these do-it-yourself robot snacks.

I began by setting out a variety of different foods to create with. The first step was to make a couple peanut butter sandwiches and cut them into rectangular shapes that could be used for the heads and bodies of the robots. Then I pulled little bits of this and that out of the fridge. My main goal was to provide the kids with a variety of shapes — sticks for arms and legs, circles for wheels, and smaller items for details — but I also used this as an opportunity to finish off the last of the blueberries and use up the remaining celery sticks before they went rubbery.

I ended up with blueberries, ranch dip, sliced olives, celery, carrots and radish slices. Some ideas for ingredients:

Then I set the kids to work. I started my boys off by giving them each a couple sandwich pieces to use as the base but it didn’t take long at all for them to get into the nitty gritty of creating their robots. Honestly, I thought they would slap arms and legs on the plate and start eating in under two minutes, but they spent quite a bit of time adding joints, control panels and other details.

They were both quite proud of their creations when they were finished and they even asked me to take photos and text them to their dad before they ate them.

When it was time to eat, the boys chowed down on their sandwiches and most of the fruits and veggies on their plates and they ate all the leftover ingredients I’d set out for them too. There may have been a few pieces of celery and quite a few olives leftover, but that’s cool because they didn’t ask me for another snack for at least another 30 minutes.

In August, my five-year old son Augie will be leaving his preschool and heading off into the big world of kindergarten. He has attended his tiny little school for the last three years and the seven kids in the pre-K program are a close-knit group. When they go to kindergarten in a few weeks their little group will not be moving on together. They’ll be spread across four or five different schools. We’ll be able to arrange occasional playdates with his friends, of course, but the daily games of tag and Lego building sessions will come to an end before they know it.

I wanted to give Augie and his preschool buddies one last big, fun, super playdate before summer comes to an end. A chance to run around, laugh, shout and really cut loose together as only a group of five-year-olds can. I wasn’t going for a full-on party, but I was hoping to pull together a small celebration, something beyond an everyday run around our backyard. The goal was to make it easy and low-stress so I emailed his friends’ parents inviting them to join us shortly after preschool pick-up at a park that’s just a couple blocks from the school so people could walk over or stop by on their way home.

I picked up all my supplies at Target on the day of the super-playdate. The kids are all ga-ga for Transformers and they’re transforming into kindergartners, so I started with that theme and ran with it. I grabbed red and blue tableware (to match Optimus Prime), a few bags of popcorn, fruit snacks that looked like wheels and a big bag of apples. My kid is always starving after school, so I knew snacks would be crucial but I kept it light because I didn’t want to be the mom who ruined everyone’s dinner, either.

Also crucial: a cooler full of drinks on a warm summer afternoon — organic juice boxes for the kids, sparkly mango water for the parents. (Though I would have been totally fine with grown-ups drinking the juice boxes and kids chugging sparkling water. I’m cool like that.)

I also grabbed a bunch of small Transformers toys to decorate the table and so the kids could each have one to play with and take home in lieu of a gift bag.

Augie helped my set up by arranging them down the length of the picnic table we’d staked out. Bonus: they kept the table cloth from blowing away. More than meets the eye, indeed!

My big splurge was a stack of Transformers t-shirts — one for each preschooler and for the little brothers and sisters who came along too. The kids were thrilled to have matching shirts. They loved picking which color shirt to wear and as they ran around they looked like a little club. Hopefully it will serve as a memento of their time together in preschool and the kindergarten adventure that waits ahead.

Have you noticed how many times I’ve mentioned running? It’s because that’s what they did for almost the entire time they were together. As each boy arrived my older son helped him choose a Transformer from the table and helped him get situated with a t-shirt. And then they took off! They ran all over the park, back and forth across the soccer field, around the play structure, in between picnic tables. For a full half hour, the other parents and I marveled at their stamina.

When we noticed that they were getting pretty hot, we insisted they take a break for some juice and a cool down in the shade.

I broke out a box of chalk and they all got down on the ground and drew their favorite Transformers.

I thought this likeness of Chase, the police Transformer was particularly good.

I had initially planned to have the kids do a craft project, but as I was walking the aisles of Target, I realized that getting a group of young kids to sit still at a playground was going to be nearly impossible.

I decided that pool noodles would be great for the kids to use as robot arms. They were a little long to manage easily, so I cut them in half before bringing them to the park. I was surprised that the boys didn’t notice the giant bin of noodles until I pointed them out, but once they did they were all over them.

At first they were content to wave them around and yell, but pretty soon they realized they are super fun for bonking your friends with. Yup, an instant crowd pleaser for the kindergarten-set.

Even more fun? Chasing the big brother in attendance and bonking him with pool noodles!

See? More running.

The kids ran and played. The parents chatted. Clean-up took 5 minutes. And a group of good buddies who are transforming before my eyes had a celebratory last playdate together.

This post is sponsored by Target. More Transformers, More Than Meets the Eye: Blur the lines of fantasy and reality with your favorite Transformers at Target.

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My five-year-old son is starting kindergarten this fall and it’s so exciting! Exciting for me, at least. For him, it’s a humongous source of worry. He is worried that when he goes to elementary school he’ll get lost in the big building, that his teacher will be mean and that they will give him the same homework that his 4th-grader brother did last year. He is also worried about leaving his beloved preschool behind, along with all his friends and his very best buddy who was born almost on the same day as him. My Augie is a worrier, and so we’ve been talking a lot about what kindergarten will be like. We’ve peeked in his classroom window. I’ve told him kindergarten teachers are the nicest teachers of all and I’ve assured him that his homework will be just right for a kid his age. We’ve also talked about how changes are scary sometimes but that they can also be really great — like when a caterpillar changes to a butterfly. “Caterpillars are nice,” I said, “but a butterfly is even better.” And then my son, who had been watching Transformers: Rescue Bots earlier in the day made another connection: “Cars are nice, but robots are better, right Mom?” Yes! Exactly! Changing from a preschooler to a kindergarten is like changing from a car to a robot! I loved that he made this particular connection because it’s one I know I can run with to encourage him through the weeks leading up to the start of school. Butterflies? Fine. Transformers? Perfect for a kid who has been enamored of cars and robots since he was a toddler! To reinforce this idea, we made a quick trip to Target where he picked out an Optimus Prime toy that he could use when he wanted to play “kindergarten.” And then while we were there, we bought a new Transformers lunch bag and water bottle that he could use for snack time next fall (and also because his Mom has a bit of an obsession with lunch gear…ahem). And then I got the brilliant idea to make him a Transformers lunch, because that would reinforce the Transformers metaphor even more. And now I’m going to show you how to make a Transformers bento box lunch for your little Optimus Prime or Bumblebee:

What you’ll need to make a Transformers Bento Box Lunch

Ingredients

2 slices of whole wheat bread

2 slices of cheese

sliced deli meat such as ham or turkey (optional)

mayonnaise and any other desired condiments

strawberries

cucumber

grapes

Equipment

Divided bento box that’s big enough to hold a sandwich and a few sides

How to put the Transformers Bento Box Lunch together

I used three special techniques to make this lunch look Transformers-y: a sandwich shaped and decorated with cheese to look like the Autobots symbol (those are the good guys in case you didn’t know), cucumbers cut to look like gears, and a home made pick with a picture of Optimus Prime on it (the leader of the good guys). Let’s start with the sandwich: The first step is to cut your bread into the basic shape of the Autobots symbol. I did a quick Google search to find an image I could use as a reference while I was cutting and I recommend you do the same. Start by stacking two pieces of bread on top of each other so you can cut through both slices at once. This will save you time and it will also ensure that the pieces end up the same shape. Use the paring knife to cut the bottom crust off the bread in a straight line. Make two small horizontal cuts on each edge of the top of the bread and then connect them by cutting an arch. If you follow the curve of the bread crust this is pretty easy. Make two vertical cuts, angling them slightly toward the middle of the bread and then cut the bottom corners off each side of the bread at an angle. When you’re done cutting you should have something that looks like this: You’ll notice that you have a bunch of bread scraps leftover when you’re done cutting. I put my bread scraps in a zip top bag and store them in the freezer to use for making bread crumbs so they don’t go to waste. Now we’re going to cut a slice of cheese to look like the Autobots symbol and use it to decorate the top of the sandwich. This is the fussiest part of this lunch, but I promise that if you take it one step at a time it’s not too hard. If you mess up and cut in the wrong place, don’t sweat it! You can just push the cheese back together and no one will be the wiser. Also, you are making a cheese Transformer for your kid’s lunch, for Pete’s sake! He’ll be thrilled even if it’s not 100% perfect. Start by centering a bread slice on two slices of cheese. Cut around the edge of the bread to make the basic Autobots symbol. Set one of the cheese slices aside and then cut the other slice into pieces with the tip of your paring knife following the step by step photos up above. Again, it’s helpful to have a photo of the Autobots symbol nearby for this part. I left a few of the details off the symbol to make it a bit easier. Now it’s time to assemble the sandwich. Start by placing the slice of cheese you’ve reserved on one of the pieces of bread. If you’d like to add some deli meat such as ham or turkey, trim that to fit inside the sandwich the same way you did with the cheese and add it, tucking any scraps on top. Add mayo and any other condiments you’d like to the second piece of bread and close the sandwich. Assemble the pieces of cheese you’ve cut to decorate the sandwich on top of the bread. I spread a little mayo on the back of each one to sort of glue them down. This will help to keep them in place when the lunch is being transported to school or camp. When your sandwich is decorated, add it to the lunch box. Now we’ll make some gears from a cucumber. I used a small Persian cucumber for this lunch, but a larger cucumber works just as well and you won’t have to cut as many slices which will save a little time. Cut a chunk of cucumber that’s about an inch thick, give or take. (The one in my photo is longer than an inch, but you won’t make that mistake now that I’ve given you this good advice.) Make about 12 shallow cuts around the diameter of the cucumber. You can do more or less, but you want to make sure you make an even number of cuts. When you’re finished scoring the skin of the cucumber, cut it into slices about 1/4 inch thick. You should be able to see the cuts you made through the skin going all the way around the cukes. Use the tip of the paring knife to cut out a chunk of skin between every other cut. This will give you the effect of gears. Cut enough gears to lay flat in a single layer of the space where you’ll be placing the cucumbers. Cut regular slices of cucumber and layer them in the box. Use the ones you’ve cut to look like gears for the top layer. The last fun addition to this lunch is a home made pick that we used to decorate the strawberries. I particularly like this one because my son is the one who thought it up! I wanted to add just a little more Transformer-y goodness to the lunch so I asked Augie if he had any ideas. He suggested we cut pictures out of the packaging that his new Optimus Prime toy came in and put those in the lunch. Clever boy! I thought his idea was a good one, but I decided it would be more practical if the picture was turned into a pick so I cut a piece out of the packaging and cut Optimus Prime’s face out with a circle punch that I use for crafting. If you’re going to try this, turn the punch upside down and center the piece of packaging in the hole so you can see exactly what you’re going to get before you punch it. Tape a toothpick to the back of the punched shape. Then add the strawberries to the lunch box and poke the fancy pick you just mad into one of the strawberries. The last thing I did was fill in the empty spaces around the sandwich with some grapes. Not only did this look a little nicer and add an extra serving of fruit to the lunch, but it also will help keep the sandwich from moving around when it’s in transit. Ta-da! When you’re done you’ll have a lunch any Transformers lover will be thrilled to eat as he changes from a preschooler to a kindergartener.

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